An updated design has been submitted to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for 312-322 Canal Street, in the West Tribeca Historic District. The site is currently occupied by a two-story retail space, owned by the developer, Trans World Equities. An initial design proposal was submitted in 2011 by Paul A. Castrucci Architect, but was denied by the LPC after being deemed too bland for the area.

Current status of 312-322 Canal Street.

The updated design submitted again by Castrucci on January 23rd, 2018 is still pending approval. If approved, the lot would give rise to a nine-story residential building, with retail space on the first floor. The structure would rise to 76 feet, 12 feet higher than the existing average for the block.

Construction would yield an estimated 54,250 square feet of space aboveground, plus an additional 7,750 square feet in the basement.

Retail spaces on the ground floor.

The ground floor would offer three retail opportunities, and floors two through six would each feature four one-bedroom apartments. The seventh floor is slated to be a four bedroom penthouse unit with private terrace access. Residents would also have access to bicycle storage in the basement and recreational space on the roof.

Close up of terra cotta facade.

Castrucci has proposed a brick-red terra cotta facade which will frame inset floor-to-ceiling windows on each floor. The architecture firm describes the project as entering into “a critical dialogue with its surrounding context. The façade’s repetition recalls some of the underlying structural rhythms of the historical district’s notable palazzo-style, cast-iron facades, but avoids replicating or reproducing their forms, details or material choices.”

The building is also slated to be passive house certified; it will use high efficiency heat pumps to condition individual interior units in addition to energy recovery ventilators which provide units with cooled, filtered fresh air.

Think about building a net-zero energy home with all its challenge except in remote regions with temperatures dropping to - 60 F for extended periods of time? As part of a graduate research, at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, Asok proposed a protocol that uses delivery of prefabricated homes to build affordable net-zero energy homes for Canada’s northern regions. As part of the research, 1200 homes built in the North since the 1950s were evaluated to study its impacts of energy policies on home. The findings were presented at the 7th International Building Physics Conference in September 2018 in Syracuse, USA.